Should supervisors make home visits when officers call out sick?

On June 4, Miramar (Florida) Police Chief Delrish Moss issued a memo to supervisors stating they are “required to conduct a home visit for every individual who calls in sick,” in order to “ensure integrity of sick leave usage and maintain departmental accountability.”

In justifying the directive, Chief Moss referenced two incidents — one where officers called out sick and went to a ball game, and another where an officer in a different Florida jurisdiction died at home and wasn’t discovered until later. While the first example points toward sick leave abuse, the second introduces a welfare check component. This suggests the policy aims not only to deter dishonesty, but also to ensure officer safety.

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Home visits raise trust and morale concerns

Police leaders may sympathize with staffing problems and suspected misuse of sick leave, but home visits by supervisors may not resonate as an appropriate response with most management teams. While the welfare check rationale may resonate with some, it risks being seen as a pretext unless implemented with clear boundaries, empathy, and officer input. A wellness policy rooted in care looks very different from one perceived as control.

Sick leave is critical for police wellness

Sick leave for police officers is presumptively especially important due to the physical and mental proficiency required for the job, and due to the environmental exposure to disease and injury faced by officers. Increasingly, agencies are accepting the need for respite for mental health as well as visible illness. At the same time, the public demands that their calls for service remain answered promptly, with little sympathy for shortages of officers on any given shift.

Understanding the rules and consequences of leave

The sick leave policy published by the U.S. Office of Personnel Management states that sick leave is intended for personal medical needs, family care or bereavement, or adoption-related purposes. Like many agencies, the rules for requesting leave, verifying leave, and accumulating leave or transitioning to disability or family medical leave may be quite technical. Leave time is essential to keep officers well and resilient, but it also impacts the burden of overtime and shortages, as reported in Police1’s “What Cops Want in 2025” survey.

What’s driving leave use and what to watch for

Now that we’ve reviewed the need and utility of sick leave, how does leadership prevent malingering and abuse? The adage that getting good at pulling bodies out of the river doesn’t answer the question of why people are falling in upriver. The same is true in addressing sick leave use. Management experts and experienced supervisors know that poor morale and stress can increase the use of leave time. Many scheduling software programs can track individual use of leave time and possible associated factors.

Alternatives to mandatory home visits

Here are some options, other than turning supervisors into truancy officers, for dealing with potential sick leave abuse:

1. Move to a PTO (personal time off) policy. PTO doesn’t need to be justified or verified. It’s time that, barring emergencies, belongs to the employee and can be used for a bad cold, a shopping day, a birthday, or just a day to relax. No inquisition necessary.
2. Regular integrity testing. Have employees acknowledge in a recordable way that they have not misused agency resources, including sick leave, against policy. Dishonesty on the form could be reason enough for corrective or disciplinary action. Officers should be made aware of the impact on their credibility and career opportunities if they lie on the form.
3. Occasional spot checks, rather than wholesale inspections.These can be evidence-based, not presumptive — such as noting an unusual string of leave days, calling in sick on weekends, missing training days, or other patterns that might indicate abuse.
4. Have a liberal sick leave policy. If not transitioning to a PTO system, make it clear that conditions that keep an officer from operating at a high level — and therefore create a safety risk to themselves or others — are acceptable reasons to take a day or two off. This can include the mental health days that otherwise are often covered by a false claim of a physical ailment.
5. Reduce illness and injury with a comprehensive wellness program. Help officers be as resilient and healthy as possible. Include annual physicals and counselor visits as benefits.
6. Most importantly, engage officers in discussion about best practice and policy to see what’s going on upstream. While some officers may be benefitting from abuse of sick leave, other officers necessarily suffer in covering for the absent officer.

If a case of abuse can be made on an individual officer, deal with that officer. Like others who flaunt the rules, a sick leave abuser may likely be an overtime abuser, a work avoider, and anything but a team player. Patterns of unprofessionalism can be apparent when all data are considered and are less defensible by the abuser than the accusation of a single violation.

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